Click on   photos for   full gallery   • Map of South Africa • South Africa   Special Report Time Line 1994-1999 Mandela becomes South African president in first all-race election _1994 New democratic constitution adopted _1996 Mandela retires from office and returns to Transkei homeland _1999		After more than three centuries of rule in South Africa, the white minority ruling party turned over power to a government of national unity led by Nelson Mandela. The two deputy presidents were Thabo Mbeki, longtime ANC strategist and diplomat who had spent much of his life in exile, and former president F. W. de Klerk of the National Party. The inauguration of South Africa's first black president, May 10, 1994, was attended by the largest gathering of international leaders ever on South African soil. In the spirit of reconciliation, the raising of the new national flag was accompanied by the playing of two anthems, "Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika" (God Bless Africa) of the ANC and the Afrikaner anthem, "Die Stem van Suid-Afrika" (The Voice of South Africa). "The time for the healing of the wounds has come. The moment to bridge the chasms that divide us has come," said President Mandela. "The time to build is upon us."         •   •   •         Reinventing South Africa consumed the new leaders, who were trying to get a grip on what they had inherited. They worked in an atmosphere of tensions temporarily appeased, but still smoldering under the surface: crime, jobs, education, homelessness. Many Afrikaners left the country taking their businesses and assets. Mandela, trying to stop the brain drain, assured whites of their security and their importance to the country. The world in the 1990s was not like the one that spawned Mandela's socialist economic views of the past. The Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc countries were gone. Interdependence of nations expanded trade. Mandela now embraced free-market policies and courted industry and foreign investment, striving to set the country in good stead in the international community. In addition, he told big business that they had special responsibility to help uplift the nation and committed them to programs to build schools and develop areas of poverty.         •   •   •         The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, chaired by Bishop Desmond Tutu, was created in July 1996 to investigate abuses committed during apartheid and to promote reconciliation by allowing people who committed violent acts to claim amnesty by confessing their crimes. The alternative – criminal trials for both former white government leaders and ANC officials – appalled both sides. Mandela was determined that a public accounting would help purge the past and provide a step toward healing and forgiveness necessary to unite the country. The commission report proved to be a profound test of the new multi-faction government as well. The ANC and its allies, who claimed the high moral ground in the conflict, were also named for torturing and executing renegade militants in its war on apartheid, and for planning in the 1980s a car-bombing of the white-minority cabinet, which was not executed. Mandela, who was in prison when the ANC human rights violations occurred, was disturbed by these actions, but later wrote it was the "inevitable consequence of the decision to embark on a military struggle." Truth did prove a potent antidote to revenge. But the reconciliation process also produced bitterness among many blacks who felt they had been asked to forgive too much of the past. The scale of reconciliation achieved can't be measured without noting the dangers and the depth of the old schisms. "We were ready for the war," said Gen. Constand Viljoen, retired leader of the right-wing Afrikaner Volksfront, who said they could have raised 50,000 troups to pursue an independent homeland. Inkatha Freedom Party leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi had threatened an oppositional bloodbath to make Angola's civil war look like "child's play."         •   •   •         The new constitution forming a democratic electoral government was signed into law in December 1996. The event was the last public appearance of de Klerk and Mandela together. Its drafting had created the final rift between de Klerk and the unity government. Mandela would listen to de Klerk, but he and the majority-ANC cabinet followed their own agenda. The former president found his expectation of power-sharing with Mandela would not happen and resigned, taking his party into full parliamentary opposition outside government.         •   •   •         Often referred to as "Madiba," his clan name and a term of respect, Mandela is also called, simply, "Tata" (father) by his people. Throughout the fragile phase of social change and compromise, Mandela served as the guarantor of stability for the traumatically changing South Africa and the impact of his departure from public life will be immense. Early in his presidency, Mandela stressed his intention to serve only one term, passed much of the government's routine business to Deputy President Thabo Mbeki and named Mbeki, whose father was one of the Rivonia prisoners, as his likely successor. Mandela undeniably made mistakes during the transition process. Maintaining a stubborn belief in himself, he attracted criticism for his dealings with opposition and foreign affairs. He had open, sometimes reckless, disputes with Buthelezi. His statements supporting Iraq and Libya angered President Bush. His persistent friendships with rogue nations who had aided the liberation movement also caused friction with de Klerk, who thought such loyalties would deter Western economic interest. And it will be to Mbeki to implement the many social plans that are unfulfilled.         •   •   •         On his 80th birthday, July 18, 1998, Mandela took a major stride toward private life by marrying former first lady of neighboring Mozambique, Graca Machel. Like Mandela, Machel has a law degree and is a revered public figure in her country. She is the widow of President Samora Machel, a foe of the apartheid regime of South Africa, whose death in a 1986 plane crash is still under investigation. Close to the end of his term, Mandela told journalists at a farewell breakfast that he had done his duty and would step down from the national and international stages when he left office June 16. "I do want to live in obscurity," he said. "I would like to retire to my village and to be able to walk around the valleys and little hills and streams where I grew up." Then Mandela asked South Africans of all races to work together on behalf of "an old man who wants to sleep for eternity with a smile on his face."         •   •   •